Sunday, 26 October 2014

From almost the very start the Nats have understood the new
politics of post devolution Scotland much better than us.

I say “almost” because at the very start the Nats didn’t.

They fought the 1999 election on a platform of bare
coherence. Never mind the electorate not understanding what a SNP victory in
that contest might mean, the SNP didn’t have a lot of idea
themselves. It would have meant some
sort of Independecy thing but as to the conduct of the day to day
administration of Scotland in the meantime? No idea.

The Labour Party, on the other hand, was the Labour Party.
Perhaps not very exciting but with generations of experience of running Local
Government and the wider local state: Health Boards; Universities: Quangos and
voluntary organisations large and small. All experience immediately available.
And if that was not enough, also immediately available, patently sensible
leadership in the personification of big Donald himself.

Looking back it was only our own self denying ordinance of a
system designed to ensure there never being an absolute majority for any Party
at Holyrood which prevented that very occurrence.

Anyway, what did that matter when we had the Libs?

So we were in power, the Libs were in power of sorts and all
was well with the world. Or at least our wee bit of it.

Except that the SNP learned from experience.

John Swinney was at one time a much derided figure. He took
over from Eck version one, struggled to make any real public impact and
eventually resigned after the 2003 election having lost further ground from an
initially losing position.

But Swinney had one major achievement. He turned the SNP
into a serious Party of Government. At least in aspiration.

By 2003 you understood what an SNP administration at
Holyrood would mean and that it didn’t mean immediate insurrection. And you
understood, crucially, that it would mean at least as basically a competent
administration as the Labour Party could bring.

The chip on both shoulders brigade would still be
accommodated within the SNP, for they still constituted the bulk of the foot
soldiers, but they would no longer call all of the shots.

Meanwhile the Scottish Labour Party moved in the opposite
direction.

When we thought we had a serious battle against the Tories
we deployed serious forces. If you look at who picked up the spoils of the
Scottish Tory collapse consider who they were: Sam Galbraith; Brian Wilson;
Anne McGuire; Anne Begg. At the point of ultimate triumph Jim Murphy.

Even our bitterest opponents would concede that these are
not exactly lobby fodder.

But in the context of the Scottish Parliament we didn’t need
such considerations. We’d be in power forever so why not share out the spoils
with the faithful irrespective of talent? We were surely never going to lose
any of these safe seats.

So between 1999 and 2011 virtually every vacancy that arose
on the Labour benches was filled, or anticipated to be filled, by an
undistinguished former local councillor who secured selection in their own home
constituency despite having not the remotest prospect of being selected in a
million years in any other.

The key phrase above is “anticipated to be filled”. For, time and time again, the electorate,
even the traditionally Labour electorate, responded that if this was the best
we could offer........

Not that we noticed.

Meanwhile the Nats moved in one other vital respect in the
other direction.

In 2007 every ballot paper across Scotland read “[Insert
name here] SNP. Alex Salmond for First Minister.”

Now, I don’t like Mr Salmond but I recognise that he is a
politician of the first rank.

But more importantly the Nats had recognised that. If you didn’t have strength in depth then you
looked to where you did have strength. And Mr Salmond was that strength.

We on the other hand offered Jack as no more than our leader
of the moment and, after Wendy fell, essentially suggested to the electorate
that our (and potentially their) momentary leader was a matter that they should
leave up to us.

So we end up where we are.

But let us (Eck aside) conduct a public recognition contest
about the 2016 Scottish Parliament Election.

And, having thought about it briefly, let us concede that based on current
Holyrood runners and riders it would be a bit like when Shergar ran in the
Derby and the bookies offered odds on who would be second.

I might not like Nicola much more than Eck but.......

So where does that leave the Scottish Labour Party following
Johann’s departure?

Well, first of all, it does not leave us in a situation the
remaining 36 of them are free to fight it out between themselves. Much as they did in
2011, the 36 will argue that’s what should happen for who would turn down a
36/1 chance of being First Minister?

Except, I’m sorry, not one of the 36 has the remotest chance
of being elected First Minister in May 2016. Some might have missed their
chance, others might yet have their chance to come. But if any one of them is offered
as the option in May 2016............. we might as well save the Party and the
Country some money by cancelling the election altogether.

I have no idea why the Scottish Executive took a paniced decision today to hold a leadership election on a truncated time scale and under a discredited electoral system. They might not have noticed but the referendum is over and there is no Scottish Parliament election for eighteen months. We could easily have allowed Anas to act pro tem and elected a temporary "group leader" at Holyrood.

That would have allowed us to think at least one move ahead. Instead, what would someone not currently at Holyrood be expected to do at the General Election next May if they became leader of the Scottish Party? Leave any elected office for a year? Stand for Westminster for twelve months and hope the parliamentary arithmetic doesn't require their regular attendance? Try to get into Holyrood in an engineered by-election and risk defeat in the process?

None of these matters appear to have been given the slightest thought. But I suppose that is par for the current course.

But what is done appears to be what is done.

And so I end with a blunt but obvious statement. We need a leader with some idea (any idea) of what to do and one who has even a remote prospect of becoming First Minister in 2016.

It pains me to say it but only one conceivable candidate ticks both these boxes.

And thus although he and I come from different wings of our Party
I am left with one inevitable conclusion.

Sunday, 19 October 2014

We’ve heard of all sorts of wonderful things they apparently
achieved on 18th September.

·If only people born in Scotland had been allowed
to vote they would actually have won, apparently.

·If only people over 65 had had the good grace to
die off sooner, then again they’d have won, apparently.

·Four Local Authority Areas actually voted Yes! This
is nearly a majority out of 32 Local Authority Areas, apparently

·Some people have vowed never to vote Labour
again, apparently

·Lots of people joining the SNP is almost as good
as independence itself, apparently

·They’re still going to have websites and rallies
and flags, apparently

·And Tommy Sheridan is going nowhere, apparently.

The list of positives is almost
endless, apparently.

The problem is that there is one big negative that doesn’t involve any apparentlies. There was a vote and they lost. Not even narrowly
but by more than ten percentage points. In an event they themselves promised would
happen only once in a generation.

Ironically, the one person on the
nationalist side who got that was Alex Salmond. He’s chucked it. There’s no apparently about
that either.

And, slowly the rest of them are getting
it as well. Tellingly, while there is lots of “we are not defeated” verbiage in
the manifestos of the three SNP Deputy Leadership candidates published in
today’s Scotland and Sunday, none of
them seeks the cheap internal votes that would come there way by pledging an
early re-run of the contest just past. For good reason.

Instead the Nats do have a short
term strategy disclosed in today’s Observer by Kevin McKenna. If they can win lots
of Westminster seats from Labour then this will assist the return of a Tory
Government. This might not be particularly good news for ordinary working
people in Scotland, or indeed elsewhere in the UK, but it would be good news for the SNP. Apparently.

I don’t really see how this works
with the electorate myself: “Vote SNP to increase the chances of a Tory
Government” seems to me an improbable vote winner in west central Scotland but,
since “Vote SNP and we’ll support a Labour Government”, seems to be politically
off the internal Nat agenda that is what their line is to be, apparently. The
problem is that going from a September argument that you should “Vote Yes to permanently stop Tory Governments”
to a following May argument that “It doesn’t really matter whether it is a Tory or a Labour Government if it
is not a Scottish Government ” might prove sufficient for the flag eaters, it
is difficult to see it gaining much traction with those who thought getting rid
of the Tories was the reason they found themselves voting Yes.

And even if the same “anti politics”
sentiment which seems the mood of the moment across Europe does bring this strategy
some success, and I don’t rule that out, is that a success the Nationalists would
really want? This isn’t a one off
referendum vote where the end might justify the means. This is a decision which
will, within the continuing Union, have day to day consequences for years. While
I concede that “We’ve got a Tory Government because England voted for the
Tories” might drive votes towards the SNP in 2016, by that same logic “We’ve got a Tory Government because Scotland
voted SNP” seems likely to have precisely the opposite effect. Don’t ask me,
ask anybody who was in the SNP during
the 1980s.

In the end, 2016 has to be the
election the SNP are really interested in. For, more venal considerations of
personal office holding aside, it is by the Nationalists own concession that the
only route to Independence now runs through Holyrood not Westminster.

So what’s the point of them
contesting Westminster elections at all?

“To keep up our momentum” would be their reply. But that brings me back to where I started. Momentum towards
what? There was a vote and they lost. And in a democratic system it is all
about winning. All or nothing I’m afraid. No apparently about it.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

I wrote before the Referendum vote about
how a certain sector of the Yes vote were voting not against the Union but
against the real world.

Thursday's Heywood and Middleton
by-election showed that this is far from a purely Scottish phenomenon although
the beneficiary on this occasion was a different populist politician.

No matter how Labour try to spin this, it
was a shocking result.

Sure, our percentage share increased
(just) but it increased only from the vote we had secured in our worst ever
performance in the seat (we even did better in 1983) and on Thursday past it
increased, even then, almost negligibly when we must surely have had some
significant benefit from the complete collapse of the Lib Dems, It can't be the
case thatallof these Libs were previously nothing
but "neither of the above" voters,

The suggestion therefor that all that
happened was that the anti Labour vote simply rearranged itself is derisory and
anybody making it should be ashamed of themselves.

No, on any view, a signicant number of
people who hadalwaysvoted Labour chose to vote UKIP and an
even larger number were sufficiently unconcerned about a potential UKIP advance
in the seat(which by polling day was no secret) that they felt no need to vote
at all.

So, what is to be done?

Well, firstly, we need to accept that
something actually needs to be done. That's not as much of a "bloody
obvious" point as it might initially appear.

Let us be clear, the calculation of the
Labour leadership has been that, if we could get 35% of the national popular
vote, then UKIP cutting in to the Tory vote might deliver us an absolute
Westminster majority from that paltry level of support. That calculation has
always been a shameful one.

If disillusionment with traditional
politics is at the root of the UKIP surge then how much more disillusioned
would people be if they found themselves on 8th May 2015 under the elected
dictatorship of a Party with a mandate from barely one third of those who voted
and, depending on turnout, perhaps as little as 20% of the total electorate? A
Party indeed that had made little more than a token effort to get elected in
large parts of the Country and relied instead on the systemic by-product of a
nod and a wink to those who wished to abandon the Tories (The Tories!!!) as not
right wing enough?

Yet that is where we had found ourselves
and indeed it meant that while we were free among ourselves to quietly be
contemptuous of Farage and all his works, our public message was essentially
that UKIP were (just) right wing Tories. That was supposed to be the only message
needed to our voters to keep them out of Nigel's clutches while at the same
time giving a green light to those who actually were right wing Tories to go
ahead and vote UKIP. Under First Past the Post, we calculated, every vote lost
by the Tories to anybody was effectively a vote gained by us.

Except UKIP are not (just) right wing
Tories. As is common with all such insurgencies matters are altogether more
complicated.

First of all it is important to set out
what they are not.

They are not an overtly racist Party.
That's not to say that some of them are not racists or that they do not attract
the "racist vote" such as it is. Whoever benefited from the collapse
of the Lib Dem vote in Heywood there is no such doubt of the destination
of the 5% who had previously voted BNP. BUT racism is not the raison d'etre of
UKIP. It is simply nonsensical to suggest that 40% of the population of Heywood
(and 60% of the population of Clacton) have recently become
racists.

And, equally, UKIP are not really about
leaving the EU. Again that's not to say they don't want to leave the EU but
simply to observe that leaving the EU is not the only, indeed possibly not even
the main, reason people vote for them. They are in reality against
"modernity". The EU is simply that modernity in one easily focused
upon form.

For that's what UKIP are really about.
About a return to earlier times. A time certainly when your passport was blue
but also a time when men only married women and vice versa; when Johnny
foreigner might be a perfectly nice, if inevitably slightly inferior, chap you
would encounter on holiday but not someone you met routinely on your own High
Street; a time howevermost
importantly of all when, as an ordinary person at least, youknew thatthe next generation would be better
off than your own.

For that was the experience of the long
post war boom. Sure, their was some turbulence in the late seventies and early
eighties but Mrs T "fixed" things and for another twenty five years
or so this happy circumstance continued. Until 2008. And since 2008 Labour has
been so worried about the reputation for economic management then lost that we
have tried to say as little as possible about the economy at all. If you
promise nothing then you can't be attacked for making wild promises, The
problem is that promising nothing is never likely to be much of a motivator to
potential (or even dyed-in-the-wool) Labour voters.

And that's the problem and the challenge
with UKIP. Just as it was part of the problem in grappling with a different
group of snake oil merchants here in Scotland less than a month back

Sure UKIP's policies are incoherent. Lower
taxes combined with various public spending promises from a bigger army through
to a higher old age pension. More housebuilding but absolute protection of the
greenbelt. And of course, not forgetting, free trade with Europe without
actually being subject to any of the rules that others have to observe for that
privilege. It's all mutually contradictory nonsense. Anybody who saw Ken Clarke
on Friday's Channel 4 News would have seen made flesh the frustration of the
traditional political class that people can't just "see" this.

But of course most people can. No matter
how far UKIP go nobody suggests they will come as much as second in the popular
vote next May and it remains a moot point whether they will even be third. But we surely can't now deny that those who are blind to these economic realities are not simply retired colonels from the home counties.

So the fact that UKIP have support from, even some, traditional Labour voters should be a concern to us. Not least because, even sticking to a 35% strategy, it is not just UKIP we are up against. It is also
apathy.

What these UKIP voters are seeking is hope
Even as we protest that Farage brings nothing but false hope we shouldn't lose
sight of the fact that in turning away from Labour these voters are consciously
blind to the cautionary adjective. For we, the Labour Party, are so keen to
secure respectability for our "sound economics" while threatening
nothing in terms of tax increases to avoid offending anybody at all that we have fallen into a trap of our own
making.

In short, too many of our traditional
supporters perceive that we are offering them no hope at all.

There remains, I am afraid, simply no
enthusiasm for the Labour project.

On of my pals was on Tony Blair's staff
during the 1997 General Election and speaks about scenes towards the end that
he could only compare to film he had seen of the allied liberation of western
Europe. People leaning out of windows and gathering on the street to
spontaneously cheer the Labour entourage as it entered town after town in what
was still officially marginal middle England.

But we shouldn't forget that on a
different battle bus, John Prescott, touring our heartlands was being received
just as energetically. For we hadn't just won over the middle ground, we had
enthused the core vote as well. More than 57% in Heywood and Middleton. That
"weigh the vote" might not have been as important to the
parliamentary arithmetic but it was certainly important to the high morale in
which we eventually entered power.

Suffice to say that core vote is not
currently enthused. Far from it.

Certainly we have to be realistic and
responsible in our policy offer but if it depends entirely on a strategy not of
hope but of calculation then we should not be surprised if more Heywood's lie
ahead.

Yet the leadership's response is to aim at
the wrong target. To assume (or at least to calculate) that this really is about immigration and Europe
and that if we talk tough on both somehow it will all be alright.

This is wrong on just about every level.

Firstly, it simply legitimises the UKIP
cause, If we concede that these are truly the source of many of our woes then why not vote for
a Party that willreallydo something about it rather than
one which addresses the matter half heartedly?

Secondly, most of our own supporters
understand the what limited prosperity we do have, and indeed the viability of
our jewel in the crown achievement, the NHS, actually depends on the European single market
including the free movement not just of capital but of labour. What are they
meant to think if we abandon that ground?

Thirdly, not unimportantly, we actually agreewith most of our supporters on that.
Even if it was possible to rein back on European integration and immigration
(and truthfully, without outright withdrawal it is difficult to see how that
could be done) do we actually think that would be a good thing? If we don't and
are just saying it to get elected one can't help feeling we would only be
swapping one problem for another. Anyway, political parties are expected to
stand for something and those who are perceived to stand for nothing seldom
prosper. Ask the Lib Dems.

But finally, most importantly of all, none
of this gives anybody a positive reason to vote Labour and, as I say, that is
the real reason our traditional base is unenthused. Farage is not the illness,
he is just one of the symptoms.

And that brings me back to 1997. It is not
to dismiss the very real achievements of that Labour Government to recall how
nervous we were then as well at being perceived as weak on the management of
the economy. And how limited our policy offer was in consequence on traditional
tax and spend. I readily confess too weak for my taste at the time.

But we offered something else in 1997. We
offered empathy and we offered hope. And having secured the empathy we
could survive that the hope, at least initially, was not of much more than a
change of tone.

That's where things are going wrong at the
moment. We appear to have no empathy with our own supporters. To be a
metropolitan elite much more interested in what a Labour Government would bring
to us than in what it would mean to them. That's why "hang on six months
for a Labour Government" proved not a silver but a chocolate bullet when
fired in the referendum campaign.

Without empathy there cannot be hope. And
without hope.....

And it is that which needs addressed. Not
the British (or Scottish) isolationist symptom but the Labour illness.